Echinacea: helping rebuild your immune system

In reading the literature, I found this interesting quote: "This (herb), which has slowly wedged its way into attention, is persistently forcing itself into conspicuity. The probabilities are that in a time to come, it will be ardently sought and widely used, for it is not one of the multitude that have flashed into sight, been artfully pushed, then investigated, found wanting, and next dropped out of sight and out of mind."

These words could have been written by any of the specialists in medicinal plants in recent years. But they come to us from a time when echinacea was first becoming known. To be specific, they were written by pharmacist, John Uri Lloyd (1849-1935) in 1904.

Echinacea first introduced pharmacologically in 1895

Lloyd, one of the most prominent historical figures in the history of American medicinal plants, introduced the first pharmaceutical preparations of echinacea in 1895, through his company Lloyd Brothers Pharmacists, Inc., of Cincinnati.

Lloyd had first learned of echinacea in the mid-1880s when he and his botanist brother, Curtis Gates Lloyd, received plant material from a self-styled physician in Pawnee City, Neb. -- Dr. H.C.F. Meyer. The latter made a patented medicinal blood purifier that included the roots of several plants whose uses he had learned from the Indians of Nebraska. One of those plants Meyer sent to the Lloyds for identification. Curtis Gates Lloyd identified the plant as Echinacea angustifolia.

Meyer, convinced of the herb's healing virtues, offered to come to Cincinnati to demonstrate the plant's powers against snake bite by allowing himself to be bitten by a rattlesnake. The Lloyds declined the bizarre offer. Instead, through the encouragement of Dr. John King, an important 19th century Eclectic physician, John Uri Lloyd made a preparation of the plant and gave it to Dr. King for further investigation.

The large number of extravagant claims made for the healing properties of echinacea strongly prejudiced Lloyd against it.

He wrote, in part, that, "However, Dr. King, with his usual thoughtfulness, consideration and care, proposed to investigate the matter, and from the drug forwarded by Dr. Meyer, I at once made for Dr. King several specimens of liquid preparations and then I passed the subject from my mind as one among a multitude of such before me, destined to remain in obscurity."

But such was not to be the case. Dr. King instead found the plant to be very useful in his own clinical practice. In 1887, he authored the first article on echinacea to appear in a medical journal, The Eclectic Medical Journal, alerting fellow practitioners to its potential value.

However, Lloyd remained a skeptic. Later, Lloyd wrote, "Owing to what this writer now views as inexcusable conservatism, he persistently refused to introduce and distribute any echinacea preparation until some time after Dr. King had reported favorably concerning the action of the drug, both in his home in the treatment of Mrs. King, and in general practice....My own delay in its general introduction is to me now a subject of self-criticism."

The words, quoted at the opening of this article, written by John Uri Lloyd over 90 years ago, have come to pass. Echinacea has forced its way into conspicuity, and has become, as Lloyd predicted, "ardently sought and widely used." In fact, it is now the best-selling herb in health and natural food stores in the United States, as well as a rising star for the prevention and treatment of colds and flu in the mass market. In fact, a poll of health food retailers and distributors published in the May 1995 issue of Health Foods Business found that echinacea was their overall best-selling product.

While the first echinacea product, Lloyd Brother's Specific Medicine Echinacea, as it was named, was introduced to the medical profession exactly 100 years ago, it was not previously unknown to human experience.

Indian groups of the prairies are known to have used echinacea species for more medicinal purposes than any other native plant. It was used for colds, snake bites and dozens of other conditions.

Echinacea enjoys popularity, not only in the United States, but also in Europe. The first echinacea preparations actually appeared on the German market in the late 1890s. According to a recent survey of European medicinal plant products, it was revealed that one echinacea product in Germany enjoys over $30 million in annual sales.

Over the past 60 years, European scientists, in Germany in particular, have investigated, and, in many instances, confirmed a rational scientific basis for the traditional medicinal use of the genus echinacea. That research has taken echinacea from the realm of a snake-bite remedy to status as a non-specific stimulant to the immune system.

Echinacea includes nine species

Echinacea (pronounced ek-i-nay-SEE-a) is a genus in the aster family, which includes nine species native only to the United States and south central Canada. They grow in fields from Massachusetts to Georgia, west to Texas and eastern Montana. Six of the nine species are relatively rare. Two, in fact, the Tennessee coneflower (Echinacea tennesseensis) and the smooth-leaved coneflower (Echinacea laevigata), are on the federal endangered species list.

The three most common species of echinacea in the wild are also the three species commonly found in the herb trade. They include Echinacea angustifolia (narrow-leaved purple coneflower), Echinacea pallida (pale purple coneflower) and the common garden ornamental, Echinacea purpurea, also known as common purple coneflower. All three of these species are used in the world-wide echinacea trade.

The majority of the supply of E. angustifolia and E. pallida is still harvested from wild habitats in the prairies and the Midwest, creating concern for their future survival. However, some commercial cultivation of these plants has begun. The entire world's supply of E. purpurea, in contrast, is commercially cultivated rather than being wild harvested.

Research focuses on use as a non-specific immune stimulant

Much of the research on this botanical has focused on the use of echinacea as a non-specific stimulant to the immune defense system. Over the past 60 years, hundreds of studies have been published, primarily in the German literature, on the chemistry, pharmacology and clinical applications of echinacea.

The majority of pharmacological and clinical studies conducted since 1939 have involved E. purpurea preparations made from the fresh expressed juice of flowering plants. Product forms include an ointment for external use, an extract for internal use, as well as intravenous and intramuscular ampoules, used by German physicians. According to German researchers Dr. Rudolf Bauer and Dr. Hildebert Wagner, over 280 echinacea pharmaceutical products are now available in Europe.

Various echinacea species, along with isolated chemical fractions, are considered to be non-specific stimulants to the immune system. Basically, echinacea helps to stimulate the body's own immune defenses for short-term help in warding off various minor bacterial and viral infections, particularly colds and flu.

Phagocytosis is the first defense component of the cellular immune system, a process that helps to prevent the invasion of foreign substances in the body. Immunostimulants activate the immune system in a non-specific manner. One important factor in immunostimulation is an increase in phagocytosis (by macrophages and granulocytes). Macrophages and granulocytes are cells in the blood that "ingest" invading pathogens or particles acting like "janitors" or "guardians" of the bloodstream. Non-specific immunostimulatory actions fade relatively quickly, requiring repeated dosage to sustain effect.

I have measured phagocytic efficiency using a number of pharmacological testing methods, including the carbon clearance test, the granulocyte smear test, and the (less reliable) chemiluminescence phagocytotic activity assessment. The carbon clearance test measures the rate of elimination of carbon particles from the blood when injected into the body cavity. The carbon particle elimination rate indicates the activity of the phagocytic system and its efficiency.

Attempts to find the immunostimulatory principles have found that its not just one compound, but several, some of which are alcohol soluble, others of which are soluble in water.

Has mild antibacterial and fungicidal activity

Other components in echinacea have been shown to have a mild antibacterial and fungicidal activity. These compounds have been found to slow down the spread of bacteria, rather than kill them outright like an antibiotic. Other factors in echinacea have been shown to increase fibroblasts (cells involved in the development of connective tissue), helping to stimulate new tissue development.

Properdin, a serum protein complex, which helps to activate different immune system mechanisms, has also been shown to be increased by echinacea extracts. Rather than relying on one chemical compound, or "magic bullet," or one mechanism of action, echinacea seems to work on many different levels to help the body help itself.

A number of clinical studies conducted in Germany in the 1990s have added more scientific fuel to the utility of taking echinacea products for help during the cold and flu season. Echinacea is generally used at the onset of symptoms, as needed, rather than continuously as a cold preventative, as one would use vitamin C.

The Commission E of the German government's health authorities, which publishes standard monographs on herbal medicines, notes, too, that echinacea, like other immunostimulants, is not recommended in cases of diseases of the immune system itself, such as in diabetes mellitus, multiple sclerosis, lupus and other autoimmune conditions.

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